


The Cardinal Sin Of Miss Clara Oswald

by Britpacker



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Conspiracy, Crossover, F/M, Historically Inaccurate, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-03-01 05:25:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13287933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: Arriving in 17th century Paris the Doctor discovers he has a double – and that double is plotting the murder of a queen...





	1. God Save The King

**Author's Note:**

> Mixing and matching Series 1 of The Musketeers (although I’ve taken the liberty of changing a few timescales – given the show’s blithe disregard for accuracy I figure I’m allowed) and Doctor Who’s modern era Series 9 to give three of my favourite recent TV characters (the Cardinal, Clara and the Twelfth Doctor) a little more fun.

“Well, here we are!” Sniffing the air the Doctor popped his ruffled grey head from the TARDIS, ferocious eyebrows lifting at the muffled sound of cheering that funnelled weirdly down through the narrow alleyway the old girl had chosen for a discreet landing. “Obviously expecting us,” he muttered, skipping over the threshold and pulling the door wider for his best friend in her borrowed finery.

Clara Oswald lifted the hem of her extravagantly frilled skirts above her ankles, dropping a daintily-shod foot to follow him. 

Something squelched. Her upturned nose twitched.

“Doctor, it stinks!”

“Yeah, well, don’t wipe it off with bare hands,” he advised over his shoulder, already trotting in the direction of the noise. 

“Why does the TARDIS always have to land in the muddiest hole…”

“Clara.” His ever-changing grey-green eyes danced every time he flashed that especially smug smile, triggering the familiar juxtaposed urges to hug and hit her favourite Time Lord. “We’re in the middle of seventeenth century Paris. And that’s not mud.”

Right on cue a window squawked open from an upper storey and the contents of a plain porcelain pot slopped into the filth two steps ahead, forcing her to skip back to avoid a brownish spatter to her elaborate cream gown. “Charming,” she grunted, sidestepping neatly while he ploughed on up the dingy alley toward a wider, busier thoroughfare where crowds surged and hollered. “Brought me to an early Pride, have you?”

“Looks like it.” Purse-lipped, the Doctor stopped abruptly where the tall overhanging tenements ended, causing Clara to cannon him from behind and knock him straight into a plump middle-aged lady enthusiastically waving her handkerchief over the head of the person jammed in front of her. “Sorry. Can’t take her anywhere.”

The throng, Clara realised belatedly, was five-deep as far as she could see; and the dull, incoherent rumble she’d heard from a distance was fracturing into a succession of definable words. _God save the King! God bless Your Majesties! The King! The King!_

“Which king?” she demanded, plucking at his coat sleeve as she bounced, trying to get a glimpse over the bobbing heads between her and the wide, well-swept carriageway. “Is this Louis the Fourteenth?”

The Doctor raised a long finger; wet it with his tongue; then swept the taste of time back into his throat. “Too early – this is what, 1628? It’ll be his father – same name though, they're an unimaginative lot, the Bourbons. Och you’re too small to see anything, I’ll give you a hand.”

“I’m fi-- Ow!”

Somehow before she knew it he’d squeezed her between two squealing shopkeepers’ wives directly in front of him: from there she was on her own, wriggling through whatever miniscule gap might emerge as bodies swayed and loyal subjects surged, eager for a glimpse of the approaching procession. The drum of hooves reverberated beneath the swell of high voices, the tidal wave of sound measuring the pace of the soldiers – _musketeers_ , she reminded herself excitedly – who surrounded the main players. She popped into the ditch at the edge of the carriageway just in time to catch the swirl of purple velvet and glint of precious stones that denoted the centre of attention himself.

His long dark hair flopping aimlessly against his shoulders King Louis the Thirteenth kept a cupped hand raised, elegantly accepting the loyal salutation of his subjects. Half a pace behind came an elaborate bundle of black silk, silver fur, bloody rubies and a towering ruff that – Clara assumed – concealed his consort. “Doctor!” she called, aware he hadn’t a hope of hearing over the halloos of the throng between them. “Who is she – who’s the queen?”

“Right bumpkin you must be, girl!” Something thudded into her arm and when she turned to give back with interest Clara found herself nose-to-nose with a bent, toothless old man whose sallow features bore the disfiguring scars of smallpox. “That’s the King of Spain’s sister that is - for all the good the poor barren wretch has brought us! God save Your Majesties! God bless Your Grace! What hole in the ground have you crawled from that you don’t know the name of Queen Anne, eh? You’ll be telling me y’ don’t know who _he_ is next!”

Clara raised her head. Stared straight ahead. 

And forgot how to breathe. “Doctor?”

“One of them heretics as well, are y’? Best keep your voice down around here, Paris don’t take kindly to your like. Where’ve you come from then, escaped one of them Huguenot hovels around La Rochelle? You’ll definitely know him!”

The TARDIS translation circuits might have chosen that moment to disconnect for all that she understood. _Him_. It wasn’t possible!

Swathed in robes of the bloodiest hue, a small cap of the same colour perched among his platinum and silver curls. Bearded – _What? When did that happen?_ – and impassive, a bland smile plastered across his hawkish features, the Doctor – _no that’s impossible, even for him_ – glided between kneeling ranks of citizenry, dispensing airy blessings to left and right. 

“They say he governs the King more completely even than his mother did,” her garrulous neighbour observed, bringing her back to the present with a tug of her bonnet’s crimson satin tie. “Still, better a son of the Holy Church than a Florentine banker’s pup! There’s no good comes of being ruled by foreigners – or women! God bless Your Eminence! God save the King!”

He was still shouting, still creaking his brittle backbone through another obeisance, when she ducked her head, turned on her heel and, elbows akimbo, forced her way through the dispersing melee toward the shadowy protection of their landing spot.

“Doctor? Doctor where…”

Spindly fingers skittered down her back and in spite of herself Clara jumped. “Boo!”

“Where the hell have you been?” 

Seraphic innocence didn’t sit well on him, and given the scare she’d just suffered Clara was in no mood to play games. Her hand shot up.

So did his. “Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara! What have we said about these violent tendencies?” the Doctor chided, flexing her wrist to make her wave against her will. “That wasn’t me, by the way,” he added as an afterthought.

He almost laughed at the sharp tilt of her head, the sudden puckering of her rosebud mouth. Only almost.

She still hand another hand free for slapping, if she’d think about it.

“Looked like you,” she stated.

“With a beard. D’ you have any idea how long it’s been since I had a beard? No,” he added hastily, watching the memories scroll through her warm brown eyes. The barn. The button. The broken, battered ruin he’d been back then. “Forget I asked.”

“Forgotten.” He no longer flinched when she pushed up onto her toes, lips puckered to press against the coolness of his shaven chin. Accepted the clasp of her fingers around his and even squeezed back in mute acknowledgement of unspoken sympathy. How far, she mused, they had come since her uncomplicated puppy had… changed.

“So: who is he then?” she asked, letting him guide her backward, out of the bright summer sun into the alley’s seclusion. “Not the bloke you got this face from, surely?”

“It seems to be scattered across the whole of time, doesn’t it?” Not giving her a chance to answer – rhetorical questions were his favourite kind – the Doctor moved seamlessly into lecture mode. Hands linked behind his back, lofty head up, he stalked to the TARDIS and turned, leaning against the old blue box with a brilliant smile. “In this particular century it’s been given to Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal – and in a year or so’s time Duke - de Richelieu. The first minister of France, no less.”

“The villain, right? The one the Musketeers were always fighting?”

“I’ll have to pop in and see Alex about that. It’s hardly a balanced portrait and you’ve got to admit, he’s better-looking than you’d think! No, Richelieu did a great deal to strengthen the Crown at a difficult time, and…”

“Doctor!”

“Sorry. What were we talking about?” Nimble as a swooping swift he lunged, yanking her back into a dark, dank doorway not bothering with a by-your-leave, a bony index finger pressed firmly against her lips. When she recovered her balance Clara shook him off, mouthing the inevitable question.

_What?_

He eased her forward, popping her head into plain view not three feet from a gaggle of more obvious dagger-wielding ruffians than Dumas ever imagined In their midst, gaudy as a bloodstain in her shimmering scarlet cloak, stood the most dazzling woman Clara had ever seen.

Piles of sable hair, perfectly curled. A cat’s eyes, polished jade and slightly slanting, gleaming in a complexion of flawless alabaster. Full lips, currently pulled into a tight narrow line. 

Cruelty made flesh. Pure ice in human form.

“Wouldn’t wanna run into her in a dark alley,” she breathed.

She could sense the Doctor’s smirk. “Why do you think we’re hiding?”

“Listen!”

“Then we’re agreed,” the woman said huskily, not flinching while the worst of the thugs shuffled nearer, his gaze on the ample mounds of snowy flesh revealed by her low-cut lace-trimmed bodice “You’ll remove the Queen and when it’s done – when we have her corpse laid out in the Chapel Royal and not before, you know who I serve and he doesn’t tolerate failure – I will bring your reward.”

“One hundred?”

“More, if you’re efficient: and safe passage to England. Agreed?”

Shaggy heads nodded. Ruby lips curled into a satisfied smile. “I’ll speak with my patron. And in future, you’ll wait for _me_ to contact _you_!”


	2. Gallifrey Defend The Queen!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Changing history. He may have the face for it but Cardinal Richelieu lacks the other qualifications. Clara knows what that means…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grateful thanks to everyone who was kind enough to comment/leave kudos on the first instalment! I should add that sentences in italics will represent a character's - usually Clara's - thoughts.

“Dumas was right.” Back in the safety of the TARDIS Clara paced restlessly while the Doctor tinkered with the controls, absently humming to himself. “And the Cardinal’s planning to have the Queen assassinated. Doctor, we can’t let it happen!”

“Of course we can’t, it’ll change history and you can’t trust a human to do that. I mean, even for a Time Lord it’s tricky. Ripples, tidal waves, a universe ruled by giant pink rabbits… You never know what you’ll get.”

“So – how’re we going to stop him?”

The Doctor paused. Cocked his head. “What makes you think…”

Clara groaned, coming to a halt directly in front of him, craning her neck to look him dead in the eye. “Have you met you? Nobody else is allowed to play about with the timelines, not even when they look exactly like you – apart from the beard and the big red dress, obviously.”

“Beard? I’ve got a time machine! I’ll nip forward a few weeks and come back with that before you miss me, and I’m sure I’ve got a set of robes lying around somewhere. Julius the Second – nasty piece of work, they called him the Warrior Pope, always fighting somebody – made me a cardinal after I gave him a hand on the road to Bologna. I got the big poncy frock but overshot my ordination by a couple of centuries – just as well really, you can’t have a cardinal living two thousand years, imagine the tantrums in the Curia! Hang on, I’m sure I’ve got an old sonic down here…”

“Doctor!” Half the time she suspected he forgot she was there: the rest, she tried to think of his absent-minded wanderings as proof of his faith in her. “What are you doing?”

“Growing a beard. Then I’m going to stop that pompous old pudding-brain unleashing havoc untold across the centuries.” Now he’d slithered down beneath the central column and without thinking she followed, dropping into the warm amber depths of his hopelessly cluttered den. “And you’re going to keep him out of the way while I’m doing it aren’t you, Clara?”

“I am?”

“That’s a brilliant idea!” When he flashed her that wild, toothy grin she knew argument, even for her, was useless. Hunched over his battered desk the Doctor tossed a shower of metallic odds and ends over his shoulders, chuntering happily to himself. “Ah, there it is! You’ll need this.”

A sonic screwdriver – rusted around the edges, its sickly glow uncertain when he jabbed the button – was slapped down into her palm. “It’s no good with wood, remember,” he told her sternly, somehow managing to stand at full height in a space where even she felt hunched and uncomfortable. “You’ll need to find an iron gate but that’s okay, he’s bound to have one of those great big useless tower thingies to keep the rabble out, they all do by the middle ages thank goodness. Those palisades were a health hazard - you should’ve seen the splinter I got climbing Genghis Khan’s fence! I’d give you the psychic paper but I’ve got a feeling I might need it myself…”

“So I’m supposed to kidnap a cardinal now.” Hands on hips, she glared at him. The Doctor’s brow furrowed ever deeper.

“If you want. Or you can just keep him talking, you’re good at that,” he countered, shooing her back up to the main level and positively dancing around the console, long fingers flying. “Right. I’ll drop you as close as I can, but watch your step. I’ll have this sorted before you know it.”

Clara was out of the door before even she could formulate a response, alone in the inky black of a pre-streetlight night with nothing but the eerie wail of the TARDIS dematerialising for company.

“Sometimes,” she muttered, plucking the hem of her less than pristine gown from the gutter’s filth and grinding her teeth against their urge to chatter with cold, “I miss a normal life! Right – find the gatehouse.”

The Palais Cardinal was massive, lording it as ominously over the ramshackle melee of twisting alleys and gloomy tenements that constituted much of central Paris as its master did over the court. At least, she thought, it had the decency to cast huge shadows for her to melt into when a raucous voice or a yapping dog got too close. Clara caught a fleeting glimpse of lamplight flickering at a first floor window as she crept around the perimeter wall - the sole sign of life and enough to send a chill down her spine. 

She could picture him too vividly: that familiar sternly focussed mein; that lanky frame bent over an enormous desk. Scratching out orders to the cold-blooded killers who’d cut any throat on his command.

_With that face, I don’t blame them!_

No. She wasn’t going to think about that. Wrapping her dark cloak tighter against a gust of icy wind, Clara was disgusted to realise she couldn’t actually think of anything else.

It was a relief to hear the sonic hum in her hands, the tiniest change of tone distracting her with the promise of action. A large crenulated gatehouse loomed and into its lee she scurried, straining for any sound within. For the first time she wished she’d paid more attention to her history lessons.

Not that breaking into a French cardinal’s fortress featured highly on the National Curriculum.

There had to be guards! Even in Dumas’ novels Cardinal Richelieu was a target for assassins. It wasn’t as if she could stroll up and ring the bell.

“Why not? It’s what he’d do!”

Whether his stomach ever clenched as hers did Clara doubted but she squared her shoulders, stepped out into the middle of the broad driveway and raised her clear voice high. “Hey! Anybody home?”

The whole city seemed to fall silent. A small grill in the towering wall squealed open, revealing a thin, foxy face barely visible beneath a leather cap pulled low over tiny eyes set much too close together. “Who comes?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Brash. Brazen. _See Doctor, I’ve been watching!_ “I just thought someone should probably know, there’s a weird flashing light thing going on by the Cardinal’s gate.”

Like the warning of an angry dog, a guttural growling sound emerged. “What kind of _light thing_?”

“Can’t you see it?” It was working and it was all she could do to hold still, keeping just the right note of exasperation in her tone. “Look!”

Shielding the sonic behind her hip she flipped the control to set skittish flares dancing across the gates. A small concealed door screeched on its hinges as it was flung aside and a shapeless bundle in a red leather cape half-fell into the street. Clara flicked the sonic into the gutter and, as the hapless guard scrambled to chase each random ghostly spark, darted beyond him, through the spartan watchman’s chamber and out into the large, unexpectedly plain courtyard behind the curtain wall.

She bolted through the nearest doorway before the sentry could gather himself enough to howl his fellows from their beds; kept running until she reached a second smaller courtyard framed with elegantly-crafted arched colonnades, then flung herself behind a stout column, the thump of her racing heart drowning the tinkling play of a large central fountain. _Right._ Time for page two of the Doctor’s handbook. 

_If you want to know your enemy’s plan, get yourself captured._

Her mind knew she should wait. Her feet decided otherwise and she sprinted forward, moving around the cool of the cloister without caring where she ended up. The voices weren’t getting any closer. 

She was starting to wonder how incompetent the average French assassin must be to have failed to knock off an enemy so poorly protected when a flash of movement by her ankle made her start, helpless to repress a squeal.

A pair of unblinking emerald eyes met hers and as she peered closer Clara distinguished the dark outline of a sleek black cat innocently washing its sooty paw in the centre of the square. “Idiot!” she muttered, hand extended as she moved toward it. The animal arched its back, brazenly inviting her admiration. “Hello, gorgeous! You gave me a real scare, didn’t you?”

“More than my guards can manage, apparently.” 

Every fine hair rose on her body. Chilled to the marrow Clara started a slow-motion turn toward that oh-so-familiar gravelled Glaswegian brogue.

It had to the TARDIS playing silly beggars. Translating his French words was one thing. Putting them into _that_ accent… that wasn’t playing fair.

As unruffled as his pet (which abandoned Clara with sickening haste to rub seductively against its master’s legs) Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu studied her with the beginnings of a sly smile visible amid his neatly-trimmed facial hair. “Although if you’re looking for the captain of my guard you’ve taken the wrong door,” he added mildly.

Amusement. Restrained, edged with something harsher that she didn’t care to probe too deeply but recognised all the same in the split second it took for his meaning to sink in. “Hey! I’m not a prostitute!”

“Of course not. You’re merely a desperate petitioner choosing an unlikely hour to present her appeal.” As he moved nearer, piercing pale eyes sweeping every inch – _every single inch_ , she amended, feeling herself start to bristle and knowing damn well he was noticing it – his hand moved to the elaborate gold cross, the only visible symbol of his status, glittering dangerously against the unrelenting blackness of his secular attire. “No matter. A word from me and you’ll have your pick of my guards for company… until I decide what to do with you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call my toy soldiers if I were you, Cardinal.” Harlot or assassin? It stood to reason he’d assume one of the two. Or possibly both, given what she’d seen of that cold-blooded vision on his payroll. “You wouldn’t want them hearing about your plan to murder their queen, would you?”

The way he rocked back on his heels was an acute reminder of the Doctor when she got that bit too cross. “Who _are_ you?” he breathed. She grinned.

“I assume I have your attention?”

“Your Eminence!”

Flaming torches cast their shadows in gigantic relief, firing sparkles through the fountain’s spray. On a protesting yowl the cat bolted while half a dozen faceless creatures in cloaks marked with the cross surged toward them. Richelieu raised a spindly hand.

People froze as if they’d been time-locked. “You have an explanation for your man’s dereliction of duty, Captain?” he suggested, much too smooth. The leader of the troop seemed to shrink six inches.

_The Doctor does that._

“The woman’s a witch, my lord – look!” The watchman she’d thought gaunt before seemed positively skeletal as he fell out of the formless mass, the sonic still flashing like a miniaturised disco ball between his grubby fingers. “She bewitched me – lured me out and dissolved into thin air…”

“Or ran through a gate left unlocked by a moron.” Impatient, the Cardinal snatched the sonic, turning it in his palm. “An interesting trinket – yours?”

“Actually, it belongs to a friend. He gave it to me while he’s doing something… important.”

One of the guards seized her roughly by the arm, wrenching her off-balance into a cloud of raw garlic fumes. “I’ll see her to a cell, Your Eminence,” he growled as his fellows sniggered. Eyes of polished steel narrowed to dagger-points.

_Yeah. He does that, too._

“Escort her to my apartments, Lefevre. I have a letter to finish for our ambassador in Madrid. Watch her, but…”

Clara was secretly relieved he didn’t finish the sentence and as the bruising grip on her upper arm relaxed she knew the message was understood. If a soldier or two leered – well, she’d survived an ocular strip-search from the Sherriff of Nottingham! 

_Keep him busy_. Letting herself be bundled through a wide arched doorway and up a broad flight of shallow stairs Clara wondered if the real ruler of France would even find time for her before the Doctor got back. 

She almost hoped not. Being stuck between two powerful, dangerous mirror images of the same impossible man… no. There were some things even the biggest thrill-seeker in the universe should stay away from.


	3. Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keep him busy, the Doctor said. This probably wasn't what he had in mind...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Clara finally gets around to sinning and the rating begins to make sense!

He appeared after five minutes stuck on a high-backed wooden chair under the gimlet stare of a jailer who all but fell over his own feet to obey his master’s airily dismissive wave. “So. Your _friend_ intends to prevent an unfortunate event necessary for the future security of France,” the Cardinal stated, visibly wincing as he eased into the equally unwelcoming chair on the other side of a paper-strewn table that reminded Clara uncomfortably of her own, almost four hundred years away. Resting his chin on steepled fingers he leaned forward with an unexpectedly gentle smile. “He has courage, I’ll grant him that. As do you, Miss…”

“Oswald,” she supplied, trying her most winning smile. “But please, call me Clara.”

In the midst of his fascinating facial hairs, narrow lips pursed. “Clara. A most unusual name.”

“Not in England.” That was, she conceded, a small untruth – she’d never met another one – but it bought her time. The Cardinal’s head tilted, his gaze turning quizzical. 

“An English agent, your King Charles is bolder than I imagined,” he drawled. Clara snorted. 

“We’re travellers, not spies!”

“Are not all travellers agents waiting to be used, Clara Oswald?”

That voice on her name! That glint in those familiar eyes as he rose to his full imposing height, the unmistakable aura of raw power crackling around his lean, starkly-garbed frame. Determined not to be intimidated Clara pulled herself to her feet and crossed her arms, unaware of the delicate flicker of tongue-tip around her lips.

He noticed. “I don’t suppose you intend to tell me how your friend means to prevent…” he crooned. She started a shrug.

In her fancy dress it felt ridiculous but halfway through the motion she was committed so, shamelessly, Clara shuffled closer as she saw it through. “Look in the window, Cardinal” she instructed in her best teacher’s tone.

Leather soles squealed against patterned tiles as Richelieu spun to contemplate his blurred image. “You’re looking at my friend,” she announced, enjoying his reflected start. “One word from the Cardinal and the whole thing’s off, right? Even that… _woman_ won’t go ahead when _you_ tell her you’ve changed your mind!”

When he turned back her knees buckled because the coolly impassive façade had cracked, revealing a fiery curiosity she knew far too well. “I have a double, then,” Richelieu marvelled, clasping his long hands and gliding closer, forcing her to tip her head to maintain eye contact. “I trust he speaks French as fluently as you do; and he has a gift for mimicry. Milday de Winter is not a woman to be lightly crossed.”

“Oh don’t worry, he’s got your accent to a T.” Circling each other like hunter and prey they moved deeper into the chamber and, before Clara knew it, through a wide-open doorway into a larger room, hung with opulent tapestries and glowing with a luscious deep gold warmth.

She could gather only the barest impression of her surroundings. More than half her focus was held by him, sleek and graceful as a panther and approaching with a confidence that marked her clearly enough as the edible portion of their equation. A blazing fire in the grate; a buxom Madonna and Child in an extravagantly gilded frame. Plush crimson drapes flowing from the posts of a large oak-framed bed. 

_So, Clara… how_ did _you end up in a cardinal’s bedroom?_

“I’m intrigued.” And enjoying himself way too much. Clara knew now how those mice her childhood pet had tossed around the back garden in Blackpool must have felt. “You must introduce us.”

“Oh, he’ll turn up. He always does.”

_Damn._ She was, Clara discovered when the bubbling sensation in the pit of her stomach expanded to fizz up behind her ribcage, getting ensnared in the thrill of this. Face to face with a wicked duplicate of the man she’d been secretly craving for ages; a copy eyeing her as if she were a tasty morsel and he hadn’t seen food for a week. “It would be an unworthy friend that left such a woman alone in the dark, Clara Oswald,” Richelieu murmured, sweeping a look from her crown down that might have burned every scrap of fabric from her body. She smirked.

She didn’t realise she’d wet her lips again until he smirked back. “And do you look at _him_ so lustfully?” he wondered, stooping to brush the words across her brow, so close she imagined she could feel the tantalising scrape of his pointed goatee. She swallowed hard, yanking herself free of his magnetic pull so hard she staggered, banging her elbow on the bedpost.

Openly amused, Richelieu arched a bushy brow. 

She tried to stop them. She was sure she did, but the words fell off her tongue anyway. “If I do he wouldn’t bloody notice!”

“Clearly he’s a greater fool than I imagined.”

Time slowed down. She watched his hand extend, the thick gold band of his episcopal ring catching every flare of firelight as he stretched to graze her velvety cheek. “To abandon you with – apparently – the most dangerous creature in the kingdom; to intervene in affairs of a foreign state; to not even see when a beautiful woman desires him… your friend does not deserve you, my dear.”

Hypnotised by that silken voice she tilted her head, allowing his wandering fingers to slip along her jaw and lower, ticklish against the base of her throat. “I don’t deserve him, Cardinal,” she whispered feeling her heart skip at his sharp indrawn breath. “And he’s way above… all this.”

His eyes, she noticed when he leaned in close, crinkled at the corners. But he wasn’t the Doctor. 

When he kissed her, Clara decided she didn’t care.

Later she might look back in horror: remember who he was – who he definitely was _not_ \- and all the reasons why a Catholic priest wasn’t supposed to do those things, let alone do them with such hypnotising skill. In the moment all she knew was that she was being kissed more thoroughly, more completely, than she’d ever been before and that the unruly multi-shaded grey curls her fingers wound into were every bit as lush as she’d always imagined.

In the moment, it was enough.

“Clara.” Long fingers of rare dexterity worked the ribboning of her bodice, their tips shooting electric sparks through the bare skin beneath. Tearing her mouth off his hurt but when she pulled back Clara earned herself one hell of a reward.

Those lean, intelligent hawk’s features were blazing with lust and his eyes… she had watched black holes dragging every scrap of matter and energy into their depths and never seen anything to equal their power. From the depths of her hyper-stimulated mind she dredged the title others had used toward him. “Your Eminence, I’m not sure you’re supposed to know about things like this.”

“What is a cardinal, if not a man?” Careful, still reverent, he lifted the oversized cross from his neck and Clara reached for it, startled by its weight in her hands. 

“How can you wear this all day? It weighs a bloody ton!”

“The least of my burdens.” Gallantly he retrieved it from her, tossing it with the carelessness of a child abandoning a toy – _or a Time Lord distracted from his latest project_ , she couldn't help but notice – onto a carved oak bedside chest. “And the only one that can be easily laid aside.”

“You love it, don’t you? Being indispensable.” 

Eyebrows. Damn, they shouldn’t be able to make her heart – and something else – stutter just by twitching. “And how would you know?” Richelieu purred, sliding a step closer.

“I know that face. Well, that and the fact you’ve virtually just admitted it.”

“Someone must govern where the king cannot.”

“And it’d better not be the queen?”

“As in your country, Clara Oswald, so in mine. A foreign consort may be necessary, but she is hardly… appreciated.”

_God, I wish I’d paid more attention in history!_

A moment’s distraction, she should have known, was fatal. Slender fingers caught her chin, gently raising it until she had no choice but to meet stormy-sky eyes alight with intelligence, curiosity and unrestrained desire. “But you didn’t come here to discuss politics.”

“I came to keep you out of the way while the Doctor…”

“Ah, your friend has a title if not a name, we’re making progress.”

“Titles are important, Your Eminence.”

He chuckled, a low, smoky sound that seeped through her pores until she could’ve sworn she felt it in her veins. “And in certain circumstances, quite unnecessary.”

Clara let her eyes drift shut, her lips parting of their own volition. “Do you know my name, Clara?”

The Doctor had used it. She had an outstanding memory – a good liar needed it, he’d know – but sent dizzy by the raw charisma of the man enveloping her she was blowed if she could remember it. 

“Armand,” he growled, sealing it into her mouth with another deep, languorous kiss. “The Cardinal de Richelieu has no place in this chamber.”

“Armand.” Unbidden her hands went to his head again, fingers sliding deep into the tumbling mane she’d dreamed of forever. 

She shouldn’t be doing this – shagging this doppelganger stranger who’d been dead for hundreds of years. The Doctor could appear any minute, bursting with pride in preventing another small human tragedy, and he wouldn’t be pleased. Yet with his tongue tickling the roof of her mouth and his thin, clever hands deftly dispensing with the ribbons and hooks of her gown, Clara no longer cared.

Her body undulated of its own will, her mouth moving hard and hungry in response to his prompting. Impatience rising she dragged a hand from his head and forced it between their torsos, swearing onto his tongue as her shaky fingers encountered the row of small hook fastenings down the front of his rough leather coat. Richelieu chuckled, the sound pouring through her nervous system as a physical sensation, and wrenched them free himself.

Beneath lay a coal-coloured shirt so thin as to be translucent and laced loosely up the front, no challenge even to small fingers that quivered as they tackled the knot. “’m I supposed to ask for absolution yet?” she murmured, dipping in to wet the cloth with an open-mouthed kiss where his single heart beat hard and fast. The same lethal sound of mirth reverberated around the room.

“Do you English heretics believe in the confessional’s power?”

Hoarser. Rougher. Not a man in the mood for theological debate, thank God. With a shake of the head that dragged his questing hands deeper into her hair Clara attached her mouth to a pebbled nipple and sucked it hard through the delicate cloth.

Low laughter turned into a feral growl and her head was yanked backward, not quite violently enough to cause pain. Impatient, Richelieu held her still for a bruising kiss: the kiss, unmistakably, of a man accustomed to command.

A control freak. Her deepest core pulsed, the wetness between her thighs rendered acutely uncomfortable. “Armand,” she mumbled, all but shoving the word down his tongue. The Cardinal received it eagerly, sweeping its last trace from hers as her gown fell away and his wandering hands, so fervent in their investigations, stilled against the decidedly unsexy stretch fabric of her everyday bra.

He drew back, eyes slitted. Taking in her flushed face, dishevelled hair and the band of undecorated white across her chest. “What is this… _contraption_?” he rasped, flicking the strap with a bony forefinger. Clara grinned.

“I’d’ve worn something sexier if I’d known,” she quipped, dragging her hands from his chest with an effort and dispensing with the obstruction herself. 

It was Richelieu’s turn to damp dry lips. “Much better,” he croaked, his head already dipping. When he drew her bared breast fully into the wet cavern of his mouth Clara discovered a hitherto unrecognised advantage to her limited frontal endowment.

Whimpering she tugged his hair, pushing herself deeper while her legs parted and he, one-handed with a skill she’d have admired any other time, forced the breeches down his slim hips before toppling backward onto the softest of feather beds, her small frame sprawled all over his longer one. “Boots,” he panted, eyes rolling at the first brush of her damp sex across his sensitised cock. Clara pouted theatrically.

“What did your last slave die of?” she muttered even as she scrambled to drag the offending items clear, taking the opportunity to fully relieve him of his breeches in the process. Unabashed, Richelieu stretched to his full length. Inviting her to ogle.

Clara obliged.

Slim and pale he might be but for his years the Cardinal was impressively built, sinewy muscles evident in all the right places. Her mouth, already dry, parched further as her perusal reached the bobbing redness of his engorged phallus, thick and eager, twitching under her ravenous gaze. “Forgive me, Father,” she murmured, feeling her mouth curl up of its own accord. “I _think_ I’m about to sin.”

“I hope so, my dear.” Lazily propping himself on an elbow Richelieu offered his free hand and she took it, laughter bubbling out when he tugged, pulling her in to tangle her shorter limbs with his. “And should you desire a priest…”

“I’d say that’s obvious,” she huffed as he rolled them, trapping her beneath his wiry, hair-spattered length. “Armand!”

“Good girl.” Damn that accent! She’d give the TARDIS such a hiding when she got home...

His mouth reclaimed hers. Clara forgot everything she’d been planning to do.

Except that. And _that_. Oh, and to slip her hand just _there_ while her masterful lover was preoccupied with the succulence of her left breast. His strangled cry moistened her flesh; the convulsion that ripped his whole length did head-spinning things all the way through hers. She’d always known he – _he_ – would be good at this.

It wasn’t the _him_ she’d imagined, but that didn’t matter now. Not with graceful fingers parting her sodden folds, one carefully trimmed nail grazing the sensitive flesh. Expertly he delved, dragging a groan and an uncharacteristic curse from the depths of her belly. “And they say Englishwomen are cold!” he murmured.

A smile played at the corners of his mouth, visible beneath her lowered lashes and Clara fought to lift them, wanting – needing – to see that inimitable face soften when the talented digits withdrew, allowing the hot fullness of him unhindered access to her waiting channel. Platinum lashes a-flutter; nostrils flared; a near-snarl of primitive bliss twisting lips left fuller, swollen by her kisses. _Control._ She was supposed to be in control here!

In her fantasies perhaps: but this wasn’t her imaginary Doctor. This was a flesh-and-blood terrestrial male who held a king and his kingdom in the palm of one fine-boned hand. And as he ground his hips to hers, pressing himself ever deeper into her humid core Clara let herself go, finally acknowledging the inevitable.

_In over your head, Oswald._

Richelieu’s steady thrusting began to waver, his breathing reduced to shuddering, painful rasps as the chasm opened before him. Clara jerked wildly her universe, usually so vast, narrowed down to him: to the fixed point in all of time and space that was their overheated join, from which all the heat and light and excitement of her existence flowed. Her voice rose on words she didn’t know. Her muscles went into spasm.

And on the sound of _that_ voice howling her name, everything exploded.


	4. Double The Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara's distraction techniques may be working a bit too well, for all concerned...

Consciousness returned with the subtle nip of teeth at her jugular. Dazedly brushing sweaty tendrils from her face Clara blinked contentedly, her hand drifting down to playfully ruffle her bedmate’s hair as she matched the smile Richelieu raised to her. “I don’t _think_ you’re supposed to be so good at that,” she commented.

“If I must suffer in another life, at least I’ll recall the pleasures of this,” he countered rolling lazily onto his back with a long arm flung up onto the pillows. Clara laughed.

“You’ll have bigger sins to account for I suppose,” she blurted. He frowned, just for a moment.

“You know my reputation well.”

“D’ you think there’s anyone who doesn’t?”

She wasn’t surprised that he accepted her challenge with smug satisfaction. “One would hope not. It’s a deadlier weapon than any of my useful creatures, I assure you.”

“I’ll bet.”

Acquaintance with the Doctor had landed her in some surreal situations she mused, letting her fingers toy idly in his sparse silver chest hair. Nothing, ever, had come close to this - having one of the most potent princes in the history of the Catholic Church purr beneath her wandering hands while casually acknowledging the sins he’d carry to his grave. “And I’m only here because of – well, I don’t want to spoil the mood…”

“Because your friend must meddle in matters of state.” Unnoticed by her brain Clara’s hand had shifted lower and Richelieu’s whole body reacted accordingly, arching up to meet her feathery touch. “Does he always rely upon you to… distract his opponents, Clara?”

“Oh, I’m very distracting.” His voice got huskier, smokier on every syllable while his trim figure moved on instinct under her increasingly focussed direction. “Drive him mad, sometimes. Not like this though.”

Before he could respond – like the Doctor, the Cardinal expected the last word – she leaned over, curtaining his face with her hair as she kissed him hard.

His mouth opened eagerly, sucking in her venturesome tongue and lapping its length while she clambered to straddle his hips, her wetness prickling at the first contact with his rapidly renewing arousal. She more felt than heard the rumbling of his growl; recognised the burn of fingers gripping her thighs hard enough to bruise without consciously registering the pain. Atop him, surrounding him, she sought to dominate even as she was enveloped by the most powerful man in France.

When he moved a hand to fondle her breast she swatted it away, earning a sharp twist of the hip that impaled her more fully on his empurpled cock. “D’ you mind, I’m busy!” she whimpered, willing her eyelids to stay up against the stretching sensation deep within that rippled pure pleasure into her belly. Richelieu emitted a truly filthy chuckle.

“I shall try not – ah, Clara! – to divert you,” he growled, doing exactly that with a precisely-calculated pelvic thrust that turned her innards to scalding water. When she slapped his shoulder he did it again.

_Oooh, kinky!_

Slipping down until she was firmly seated, his pulsing phallus buried to the balls, she had no time to follow the fleeting thought. An experimental hip-roll sent shimmers of sensation to every extremity and forced a definite moan between his puckered lips, his arms falling slackly at his sides, fingers kneading the fine sheet beneath. “Better,” she breathed, lifting herself a fraction before plunging down again.

Richelieu spat something she didn’t need the TARDIS to translate. “ _Merde!_ ”

Newborn stars. The dawn of civilisations. Daleks, cybermen and mummified soldiers on ridiculously ornate space trains. Clara had seen a universe of miracles and horrors, all of which paled into insignificance before the sight of this powerful, passionate man succumbing to her command. Never passive yet always obedient to her direction Richelieu moved restively beneath her, head tossing, eyes half closed. “Good?” she breathed. 

His head jerked the agreement his eloquent tongue couldn’t find and she rode harder, faster, feeling the burn beginning to spread, to possess her. “Better?”

It was a squeal that he returned as an uninhibited moan, the old wooden bed creaking angrily while their movements grew jerkier, more violent, and the spirals of pleasure spiked out from their connection in all directions. The room blurred around her.

Heat. Light. Pressure. It was all there in her head, galaxies exploding and she was right at their heart, her body burning, screaming as he pulsed to his release, hot jets of him striking her very core while her inner muscles spasmed, clenching themselves around him. Richelieu’s voice broke on a ragged cry, crashing into her own strangled scream as Clara let the vortex of sensation carry her away.

*

The soft pad of his bare feet roused her and she blinked drowsily at him as he loomed in all his ebony and silver splendour at the bedside, her garments dangling from his hands. “If that’s supposed to be a subtle hint I think you’re losing your touch, Cardinal,” she muttered, feeling her mouth pull into a grin at his mute distaste for her underwear. “And I’ll take those, thanks. I thought you Frenchmen were supposed to be gallant!”

“I imagine your Doctor might be displeased were he to discover the villainous Richelieu forcing himself upon an innocent woman, Clara.”

Mischief. In those penetrating grey-green orbs it was her greatest weakness, no matter the man behind them. “He’s my best friend. He knows me better than to think I’m in any way innocent.”

There it was again: the expressive twitch of a prominent eyebrow that did funny things in her lower portions. “And you do not know men as well as you assume, my dear. I’ll leave you to dress. Unless…”

“I’ll manage.” Scissor kicking her way clear of the bedclothes Clara didn’t miss the flash of naked lust the priest spun away to disguise. 

The Doctor couldn’t be much longer. And if she didn’t dare hope for possessive rage, she could still dread the air of puzzled disappointment her surrender to those grubby little human urges would almost certainly provoke.

Her fingers fumbled with the complex ribbons of her bodice. Cursing under her breath Clara knotted them impatiently and stalked through into the outer chamber, where a brimming wineglass immediately appeared at eye level. “Oh. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” As composed and business-like as if he confronted the king and his council Richelieu folded himself into a chair and gestured lazily to the more comfortable chaise against the opposite wall. “And I’m intrigued. How does your friend intend to retrieve you from my clutches?”

Before the sentence was out it was drowned by a familiar groaning, wheezing sound that vibrated through her bones. “Like that,” Clara informed him coolly, standing as the TARDIS materialised to block the bedroom door. “Doctor!”

“Clara! Sorry it took so long - minor detour to return a wandering Davoodi to its mother ship.” Clean-shaven but still resplendent in sweeping scarlet robes the Doctor tumbled through the police box’s door before it was fully opened, freezing with limbs akimbo at the sight of his petrified mirror image. “Cardinal Richelieu, this _is_ a pleasant surprise! She hasn’t been bossing you about, has she? She’s got form with that, haven’t you, Clara? D’ you know, I don’t think Henry the Fifth ever recovered from her lecture on personal hygiene during the siege at Meaux.

“Actually I know he didn’t - went down with dysentery, didn’t he? It’s probably just as well – you might’ve changed the course of history if he’d learned to wash his hands! Anyway we mustn’t stand here chatting, the Cardinal’s got a country to run.”

“Extraordinary.” While she gaped as if she’d never seen the blustering idiot before Richelieu rose smoothly and swayed around the table, narrowed stare riveted on - well, his own face. Heads cocked, lips thinned and nostrils flaring, the prince of the Church and the lord of Time entered a flat-out staring contest Clara had no intention of interrupting. “If I were born a twin…” Richelieu breathed

“Oh I think one of you’s quite enough for history to handle.” Unusually given his dislike of physical contact the Doctor held still as the Cardinal’s hand came up, grazing his stoic face. A note of steel entered his voice, flexible and deadly as the blade itself. “And that’s safe for the time being, thanks to me. Your assassins are in the middle of London by the way – can’t remember how they got there, or how they learned to speak English when I think about it, but you needn’t worry about them. King Charles’ll find a reason to hang them for you before the year’s out.”

It was, she assured herself, all the fault of recent… activities. Watching two dangerously powerful men (who both happened to be absolute sliver foxes even if neither of them would have a clue what the term implied) pawing the ground across a range of two feet wouldn’t normally, Clara told herself firmly, be such a turn-on.

_Liar!_

Damn. Now she was even _thinking_ in a Glaswegian accent!

“I’ll be sure to convey my thanks.” Richelieu had recovered his composure, curiosity triumphant over innate suspicion. “And Milady de Winter? I trust your impersonation was sufficiently accurate…”

“Well there’s no knife in my back as far as I can tell.” Theatrical, the Doctor whirled around to prove his point. The Cardinal granted him a knowing smile. 

“I shall be careful to offer her no opportunity to implant one in mine, Doctor,” he drawled. “Whatever tarradiddle you invented to excuse this apparent change of heart…”

“Oh, I just told her the truth – you should try it sometime.” Effortlessly insulting through his rarest charming smile the Doctor seized her hand and nudged Clara indiscreetly back toward the TARDIS. “And Anne of Austria is far more use to you alive. You’ll thank me someday, I promise. Come along Clara, we mustn’t stand here chatting nonsense, the Cardinal’s a very busy man!”

She had time for a smile and a sheepish wave before the familiar doors creaked shut behind her. 

Had anyone been peering through the windows of his private suite as the strange blue box dissolved into nothingness before him they would have seen a sight deemed impossible across the kingdom. The Cardinal de Richelieu, chief minister and not-entirely-secret ruler of all France, stood speechless, bemused and utterly thunderstruck.


	5. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's good for the soul. Apparently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the timing of events. Obviously this fic intersects with The Musketeers S01 Ep 09; in Doctor Who terms it’s sometime after the events of Under The Lake/Before The Flood and before The Girl Who Died.

“What did you mean, she’s more use to him alive?” Leaning against the central console Clara watched the Doctor do his spiderish, oddly graceful skitter, throwing levers and punching buttons in what she still secretly believed was any old random pattern. “They hate each other, don’t they?”

“Oh, he’ll understand when Milady lets slip tomorrow – or later today, I might’ve been a bit longer than I expected, what with the Davoodi and all that. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” His unwanted robes abandoned on the floor like a gigantic bloodstain the Doctor was watching her from the corner of his eye with a wariness she’d thought long forgotten, his lips pursing whenever he thought she wouldn’t see. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

The other him, the him she’d first met – bow tie, floppy hair, absolute inability to bring more than one limb at a time under any kind of motor control – would have blushed. Fidgeted, faffed and stuttered.

What he wouldn’t have done was freeze, fixing her with a gimlet stare as if she, not he, were the guilty party. “Like what?”

Squaring her shoulders, Clara blurted out the unvarnished truth. “Like you’re afraid I’m going to detach something vital any minute.”

The Doctor sucked in his lips. “You’re not angry about… anything?” he hinted, long hands waving through a mesmerisingly sinuous gesture. Clara shrugged.

“Not that I’ve noticed. Should I be?”

His glance flickered off somewhere beyond her left shoulder. “You were all right – with him?”

“Course I was, you can see… Oh.”

She held still when he approached her, nose twitching. “I can smell him, Clara,” the Doctor growled in the ominous tone that always reminded her of distant thunder. “He _touched_ you.”

“It’s okay.” The concept of physical contact as pleasure wouldn’t occur to a man who flinched whenever some gushingly grateful beauty so much as pecked his cheek. “I wanted him to.”

Complete bewilderment. She didn’t see it reconfigure this face often. Which was just as well, because when she did it melted what little was left of her heart. “Wanted?” the Doctor whispered, stopped in his tracks. “Why would you…”

Oh, there were times she could shake him all the way to regeneration and back! “Because I fancied him, you idiot!” she yelped, infuriated beyond discretion. “And because - if this isn’t too weird a concept for you to get your thick head around - he actually found me attractive!”

“Oh, Clara.” Everything about him could switch in a nanosecond. The bristling resentment was gone, replaced by an aching tenderness that brought tears to her eyes. Impatient, she blinked them away. _Can’t let him see them inflating, he hates that and oh God, why’s he staring at me?_

“You brilliant, ridiculous, beautiful girl of course he found you attractive! Or did you think Jane was the only one who’d notice?”

“B-but – but…”

_You’re not a young woman any more. Sort of short and roundish, but with a good personality. We look exactly the same age!_

A hundred dismissals chased through her head as she stared at him, open-mouthed. “Ach, you silly girl!” the Doctor grumbled, breaking into the sweetest of his myriad smiles when she least expected it. “Remember all the jokes and forget who played “Pretty Woman” for you, eh? Humans!”

Her eyes narrowed and he rocked back – probably in readiness for the slap she thought momentarily of delivering. His lips pursed. The furrows across his brow deepened. “Ah, Clara, does this mean…”

_Bollocks._ He’d noticed.

Didn’t he always?

There was nothing for it but to follow the theme of the day and confess. “Yes, Doctor,” she said tiredly. “I told you. I found the Cardinal attractive.”

“But he looks…”

“Exactly like you. Yeah, that’s probably part of the attraction.”

“Oh, Clara.” Horror – disgust - she could’ve coped with. This - quiet, sorrowful, sympathetic… no. She hadn’t been ready for this.

“It’s okay.” When he would have initiated contact she brushed him off, though her heart broke at the hurt flooding his stormy eyes. “I know. Missy told me I should _rise above the reproductive frenzy of my noisy little food chain to contemplate… friendship._ ”

“Yeah, well she wouldn’t know anything about either.” The bitter bark of his laughter shook her from terminal humiliation and Clara’s head shot back, allowing their gazes to connect. “The last time I saw her – him – before I met you…. Married. To a human.”

“Poor bloke.”

“Woman.”

She blinked. Some things, even seasoned time-travellers didn’t necessarily take in their stride. “O-kay. Back to the point?”

“The point being…” Not for the first time he was reluctant, she gathered, to come to it. He stretched out a hand, hesitating within millimetres of hers. “You trust me don’t you, Clara?”

She closed the gap, lacing her fingers through his. “Completely, you daft old man.”

He took her other hand, cupping it as if it were made of the finest crystal. “Close your eyes.”

The question forced its way onto her tongue but resolutely Clara bit it back. _Don’t ask why. Trust him._

He was stooping toward her, she knew without looking. That tang of Time, the essence of the universe itself filled her senses and she relaxed into it, exhaling as his forehead brushed against hers. _Hell on a two-thousand-odd year old back_ she decided, before the rushing sensation in her skull carried her train of thought clean away.

Everything. Everywhere. All of time and space, every miracle of the universe, flooded her very being and in the middle of it all – her.

_Clara, my Clara._ His voice reverberated through her, as if it emanated from every individual fibre of her being. Eternity pulsed around her, time itself flowing through her veins. _Do you see now? Don’t you feel it?_

She did.

_The love of a Time Lord._

It might have been centuries before he withdrew, disentangling his mind from hers with the utmost delicacy, so slow and gentle she barely realised it was happening. Only then did he stand to his full height, blinking his surroundings back into hazy focus as she trembled, rosy lips prettily puckered and silent tears trailing shiny tracks down both cheeks. “Clara?”

Her head was spinning. Exhilarated and drained, her body thrummed with a raw pleasure more potent than any physical release could bring. Even in echo she could feel him, all of him, in every single cell of her body. 

“I… that was…” Lost for words, she lifted trembling fingers to his cheek, no longer surprised that he tilted into the touch. “Doctor I - I never knew!”

“Yes, well, you couldn’t really, could you? Humans, you’re so…”

“Doctor.” She raised a peremptory hand and the words died on his tongue. “Shut up.”

He mouthed a wholly unrepentant “Sorry!” 

Clara giggled.

She never giggled. “That was…”

“That was _us_ , Clara.” Gently he guided her to the nearest chair, aware the euphoria she’d just experienced must leave her lightheaded. “I don’t let just anyone see that, you know. Most of your species couldn’t withstand that level of telepathic exposure…”

“Doctor.” She snatched his hand and gripped it between both of hers. “You’re spoiling the magic. I know now. That’s enough.”

Shrewd grey eyes assessed her but, still buffered by the immensity of his love for her, Clara barely noticed. “Is it?”

“Doctor. It’s more than I ever dreamed of.”

_And a billion times more than any man – even the most powerful of his age – could give me in bed._

She didn’t say it aloud, but as his eyes widened and a faint flush kissed his cheeks she knew the last trace of telepathic connection had carried the pledge straight into his skull. Very gently the Doctor raised their clasped hands and let his lips feather across her knuckles.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “Now – future Mars! We never got ‘round to that, did we?”

“So let’s go.” As he spun away to the console Clara sprang in his wake, wrapping her arms around him when he came to a reluctant standstill, her cheek resting on his shoulder. “What’ll happen though – to the Cardinal?”

“Him? Oh, he’s unassailable – he’s the man who handed La Rochelle to the King and the Catholic faith a month or two ago! He’ll survive a plot by the Queen Dowager in a couple of years, come out even stronger and rule France on Louis’ behalf until… well, let’s say he’s set for life as long as he picks up the little hint I left with that nasty assassin of his.” Relaxing into her hold the Doctor flipped the last switch to send them spinning off toward another adventure. “And he’s brilliant – he will. Must go with the face.”

She was still laughing at his sublime egotism when the reached the brightly-lit heights of the Martian polar range in time for the millennium celebrations of the Year 8000.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a short epilogue to tie things up which I hope to post soon. Thank you for all the kind words, reviewers!


	6. Epilogue - Paris, 1628

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for the Cardinal to prove whether he's worthy of the Doctor's confidence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I despair of myself sometimes - I thought I'd posted this ages ago! I only realised when I cam to begin a new work in a very different fandom that this tiny epilogue was still hanging...
> 
> My apologies, and thanks again to all who have been kind enough to leave kudos or reviews!

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Don’t over-estimate your usefulness to me, Milady.” Indignation he had been prepared for, Richelieu conceded as he watched her sweep across the courtyard, too outraged to fall into any kind of diplomatic obeisance at his feet. Roughly he seized her arm, fingers biting deep into the succulent flesh as he dragged her into the safety of his private chapel. But what must the Doctor have said to arouse her to this frenzy?

“Everything was in place. She’ll never be more vulnerable. WHY?”

“Because _I_ decree it!” Drawing himself to his full height Richelieu stepped closer, looming over the petite brunette for the satisfaction of watching the boldest of his creatures cower. “I do not explain myself to the dregs of the prisons when I choose to make them useful, madam! You have your instructions. Obey them, or you may find the hangman more thorough than before.”

For the first time he saw her falter. So, his intelligence was accurate. “I apologise, your Eminence. I didn’t mean to question your judgement, but what you said…”

Though his features remained thunderous, Richelieu felt a sudden lightness skitter through his chest. “Yes?” he growled.

“That the Queen has placed herself in your hands – that she betrays herself with every look behind…”

_Every look behind._

As if he was pulled back in time, Richelieu could see it. The Daughter of Spain stepping sedately in her husband’s wake. Her head turning every few steps. Her gaze resting, just long enough and just often enough, on the musketeer a respectful three strides further back.

Aramis. 

_Of course. Is there a woman in Paris immune to that thrice-damned rogue?_

The fine hairs along his arms began to prickle, the air around him chilling to midwinter as the Scarlet Eminence, the puppet-master of France, contemplated the enormity of the mysterious Doctor’s gift. “Yours are not the only eyes in Paris, Milady,” he stated, oblivious to the triumph that blazed across his craggy features. “The Queen is in my power, but she must not know it yet. Now, you’re familiar with the musketeer named Aramis? I want him watched – carefully. See to it.”

_Aramis._ Her lips curled around the name, comprehension bringing a cold jade sheen to her eyes. “Forgive me, Your Eminence. I may not have entirely grasped your meaning before.”

“Your usefulness is not in your wits, Milady.” Cruel and not wholly accurate, but the rebuke served to remove her, crimson hood drawn closely around her face, from his sight. Moving smoothly, automatically, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu glided toward his private altar with a heart lighter than he had known in many months.

He would remember his enigmatic double in his prayers. What gifts the man had brought with his pernicious interference!

A night’s amusement with a woman like no other. And the ultimate weapon of control over the Queen herself. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” he breathed, wincing against the creak of bone as he knelt, head already humbly bowed. “Thank you for everything!”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm usually a stickler for historical accuracy but that's not going to work with a Musketeers fic. I've had this on the back-burner for a while but have been inspired to get it going again by the sad demise of the majestic Twelfth Doctor.


End file.
